Peregrine Falcons first nested on Derby's Cathedral, England, in 2006. Our Peregrine Project is now run by a partnership between Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, Derby City Council, Derby Cathedral and the Cathedral Quarter. Here is what's happening in 2015. . .

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Thursday, 29 March 2012

Our first egg of the season!

She led us a bit of a dance, but Derby Cathedral's peregrine falcon has laid her first egg, at last!
Blog commenter, Phoebe, alerted us with a message posted here at 01:04am this morning. This just gave us time to zoom in the camera and capture this moment a few minutes later. She did looked tired, and she had certainly led us to quite a few false alarms over the last few days.

First egg (Laid at 1am on 29th March 2012)

We know from remarks left by viewers clicking the comments link below each post, that there are quite a lot of new webcam watchers and a few more Derbyshire schools watching this year. A big welcome to you all. In particular we say a big welcome to Holmesdale Infants and to their teacher, Rachel, and to Megan who posted her thoughts on behalf of all the children there.

If you have questions about the lives of these amazing birds (they are the fastest creatures on earth!), do leave a blog comment and we'll do our best to answer it for you.

Two things are worth saying right now:
1) Peregrine eggs glow white under the night-time infra-red light of our camera. But in daylight they are a deep reddish colour.

2) Up to four eggs are usually laid, at intervals of just over two days between each one. Don't be alarmed if you see the nest platform with what looks like completely abandoned eggs in it. This is normal. The adults leave the eggs unattended, sometimes for an hour or more at a time. They only start incubating their eggs properly once all of them have been laid.

Maybe some of the school children might like to talk about why they might do this, and what advantage it gives them. We would love to hear from schools why you think this happens. We'd like to hear these ideas before the adult webcam watchers and blog readers give us their answers!

Shown below is the very first picture captured by regular webcam viewer, Phoebe. Anyone can make screeengrabs like this and post them to our Flickr Group to share with everyone here. (Follow the link at the top left of this page to go to Flickr and read how to do it)

Note the careful way our female sits over her
egg, with wings slightly outspread. 1130am 29 March

An apparently abandoned egg will be a frequent sight until the
penultimate egg is laid. Only then will incubation properly start.

Our thanks must also go to "RJ" who left a detailed comment on this blog post. He (she?) had looked back through our archives and calculated the average time between egg-laying, and forecast the second egg will be laid around 3pm local time on Saturday. (For those of you outside of our BST timezone, our webcam pictures do show local time in a narrow black bar at the top of the image.)

Here's what RJ posted:

Looking at the last three years, it took around a week from the
first egg to the fourth. Here are the gaps between them, rounding to the nearest
hour:

20111-2: 60 hrs2-3: 57 hrs3-4: 58
hrs

2010:1-2: 57 hrs2-3: 45 hrs3-4: 67
hrs

2009:1-2: 70 hrs2-3: 45 hrs3-4: 70 hrs

This gives an
average gap between each egg of:

1-2: 62 hrs2-3: 56 hrs3-4: 65
hrs

On those average times between #1 and #2, egg #2 this year could
arrive around 3.00 p.m. Saturday afternoon.

I am so pleased to hear the news about the first egg! I have been watching almost non-stop for two days now, and I just knew the little scamp would produce when I wasn't looking! Delighted all the same - congratulations Mrs. Derby P!

Just logged on - saw the egg! Well done Phoebe for the screengrab and Nick M. for staying up, you must both be exhausted but elated! And of course, congratulations and thanks to our amazing pair of peregrines. This makes all the anxiety and tension disappear, & I feel so happy.

So happy to hear you have your first egg now. And we have two eggs (so far) here in Aylesbury!!!!! We are so excited. It's extremely helpful for us to access your store of data and experience. We can't believe our birds (that we think are younger than yours) beat yours to it this year.

We are blown away by the egg! We were surprised because we thought it'd look like a golf ball or a chicken egg. It's a lovely colour!We think that the peregrines will be collecting as much food as they can so they can fatten themselves up. We think this is because only one bird can collect food when they've started incubating the eggs.

Hello we have just saw the egg.The peregrin has just flew awey.We were xcssited about the first egg.The egg is redish with broun spots.It is a lovely rond shape.The femal isant incybating yet because it hasnt laid all of the eggs yet.If she sarted sitting on the egg now it would hatch befor the others.She is verry clever.She needs to make sure that they all hatch at the same time.We are gowing to keep looking for the other eggs. We carnt wait for the next fyou eggs.

So glad you were amazed by our first peregrine egg. It is a superb colour, isn't it?

Some of you made a very good guess at why peregrines don't start incubating until all their eggs are laid.

The reason peregrines can afford to have all their eggs hatch out at the same time is because they are such good hunters, and food is never in short supply because they catch so many different types of birds to eat.

There is no worry that food will ever be scarce. So, by delaying sitting on the eggs until the last one is ready to be laid, they all start developing and hatching at the same time.

This makes it much simpler for the daddy bird to bring back food of the right size for all the chicks at once. But, most importantly, when they're ready to fly they all leave the nest at about the same time.

This makes it easier for the parents to look after them, and teach them to hunt for themselves without having to worry about young chicks still sitting in the nest, unable to fly or to look after themselves.

The opposite happens with owls. Owl eggs are incubated as soon as they are laid. The first egg is the first to hatch. That chick gets the most food because it's the biggest and can push smaller chicks out of the way. In bad years, when food is short, the last chick to hatch often dies because it can't compete with big brother or sister for the food it needs.

If you have a big brother or sister at home, try imagining how horrible it would be if your parents came home from the supermarket and said there wasn't enough food to go around this week!How would you feel about that, and who would get the most to eat in your family?

By the way, i could not replicate the captcha words and when I tried to listen the voice was difficult to hear and did not seem to bear any resemblance to the characters i was supposed to enter. HopeI am thired time lucky. Am I the only one having difficulty?

So thrilled Mrs P laid her first egg. No work will get done now, well not very quickly.

We were in Lincoln yesterday and they have peregrins on the Cathedral - have for 10yrs. They had put up a platform and cameras but the peregrins decided to nest elsewhere on the building. How disappointing for them

What a nice birthday present for me! Blow me, I watched until 1.00a.m and just missed seeing the first egg laid. It was fairly obvious that "a delivery was due" Derby has saved the best till last. Well done to Mr and Mrs P.Keep watching children, it gets better and better.

Our Aylesbury birds are behaving apparently totally different to your Derby pair. Derby nonchalently ignores the incomplete clutch - Aylesbury sat tight as anything on two - and then eventually we saw we have a third one. Also, is it my total imagination, but I think I see a tiny pinprick of white in the shells of the Aylesbury eggs. Is this normal? What are they? I've tried to change my blogger photo but it's sooooooo hard!!! All I've managed to do is delete the old one, how annoying!

Hi Felix,That is a good question. The mum will hopefully lay some more eggs before she starts to incubate them (keep them warm to help them grow) When she starts the incubation it will be about 30 days until they hatch, but with all things in nature that may vary a bit. What colour do you think the chicks will be. Chris

Thanks for putting my post up on the blog. I’m already getting the calculator out for an estimated first hatch! I’ve been following the Derby peregrines since 2009, mainly because my wife (yes, a ‘he’, and that’s solved that question!) is Derby born and bred. I’ve seen these magnificent birds on many occasions on visits to Derby, and would urge anyone to do the same.

As an aside, I have to struggle, like others, with those fiendish anti-robot word things, to post. I feel quite an idiot when it takes three attempts.

Hi Anna at Holmesdale Infants.I have checked back through our records to see how many eggs they have laid each year.

Phoebe was right to say between three and four. I discovered that our birds have laid four eggs every single year since 2007. About half of those eggs actually get to produce a young bird that lives over a year - so it's a risky business being a peregrine egg!

For those of you frustrated by the "prove you aren't a robot" bit, I have removed this facility for now, but may reinstate it if we start to see problems.

HiAt 11pm last night no falcons on scrape or tower but by 11.10pm Mr or Mrs P flew on to the tower with prey. It was too dark to see any detail but could see the work going on with the prey. Supper and one satisfied Falcon.

Thank you, Nick, for responding to concerns about the captcha test. If you restore it I shall quite understand. Glad I wasn't the only one to have difficulty. What was the most irritaing was the the voicing of the charatcters didn't work for me.

We where suprised when we saw the first egg. we think the next egg will be on saturday in the afternoon.We are very exited because we saw bluetits in our school box today. Bluetits eggs are quiet smaller than peregrines eggs. This morning we saw the adult bird sitting on the egg to keep it the right tempracher inside the egg.

My class have loved watching the birds and waiting for the eggs. We are all very excited!!!The children think the chicks will be either white or red (like their eggs)... they havent seen any pictures yet so they are having a clever guess.

We've seen the female (we think it's the female) sitting on her egg with her wings slightly open. Today we've seen the egg all on its own alot too.

It gladdens my heart to hear of all the children who are getting involved with our peregrines, it gives us hope that future generations will continue to care about our beautiful wildlife. It is very exciting to think that we may have another egg at Derby very soon - best of luck to Mr & Mrs P

But look carefully, and you'll see that the mummy bird (female) is much bigger than the daddy bird (male).

When she sits on the eggs she almost fills the nest scrape. Then he sits on them, he looks much shorter and less bulky.

Let's set a challenge for our webcam watchers around the globe:- Try and capture a picture of the male and then the female bird in exactly the same pose, and post them with clear labels to our Flickr site.

I'll select the best comparative pictures here on this blog for you all to see. Or I'll base the selection on the highest number of comments left on the Flickr photos to indicate which are the best pair of shots.

2nd egg, great, and alters the averages a bit, only approx 55 hours gap. I’ve just realised I’ve made a maths error on that second average (between #2 and #3) the average should be 49 hours. (I bet all the classes out there spotted that one!). So, looking at Monday morning, 5 hours either way of 8.00 a.m.?

2nd egg, great, and alters the averages a bit, only approx 55 hours gap. I’ve just realised I’ve made a maths error on that second average (between #2 and #3) the average should be 49 hours. (I bet all the classes out there spotted that one!). So, looking at Monday morning, 5 hours either way of 8.00 a.m.?